I tend to think that I have my life together but every once in a while I’ll be reminded that I can’t control everything. Things happens just out of reach. I keep my thoughts and actions organized. I plan my finances and most of the time that goes well. The times it doesn’t is hard because it’s beyond me. The things in my grasp are tightly knit but the things outside of that are unknown and untenable.

There’s something about thinking you have things together; you know you’re wrong and you know that there’s nothing you can do to get that last bit of shit together—what’s just out of reach. The shit that happens to the people that you love, the shit that happens to the people you don’t that ends up making its way to you. It’s stuff that doesn’t even really exist but can somehow still go missing. You can’t fix it because it only manifests itself as stress and frustration and you can’t fix that crack. You can make phone calls, and send emails, and try to plan your way out of it. But you’ve got nothing. You can’t control it. You have have no ground to gain because this isn’t a land war.

It’s a war of perseverance. It’s a war of trust. It’s a war of endurance and your ability to focus on the long journey. The part that’s frustrating is that you think that if the war was on your turf, you’d be able to fight it—and win. The truth is that war is not yours to fight and you gain from that. You’ll have your front-line battles again but, this time, you have yourself to fight. You fight for strength to keep your wits. You keep yourself prepared for the next battle you’re called into. You journey through urges to throw stones, throw words, throw cheap blows because you don’t realize there’s no other enemy to fight.

When you realize the enemy you’re fighting against, the war becomes controllable. The outside forces will continue their fight and you just have to keep yourself alive until the shelling ends and you can charge on all fronts.